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Prior to moving to the University of Bristol in 2001, Rarity worked as a physicist at the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) arm of the UK Ministry of Defence.

Notable early achievements while at DERA included demonstrations of quantum interference and non-locality over large distances, demonstrating a violation of Bell's Inequality over 4 km of optical fibre in 1994. These experiments were followed by work in quantum cryptography, resulting in his team at DERA setting a world record of 1.9 km range for free space secure quantum cryptography.[3] A collaboration with Ludwig-Maximilian University, Munich in 2002 successfully demonstrated an open air quantum cryptography experiment over a distance of 23.4 km.

Since moving to the University of Bristol, Professor Rarity has built up a group working in experimental quantum optics. One project which has received substantial publicity recently in collaboration with the Quantum Information Processing group at HP Labs is developing affordable quantum key distribution systems.[4] The scheme reduces the cost by using pulsed LEDs rather than lasers as the source of transmitted qubits.[5]

In 2007 Professor Rarity collaborated in a demonstration of quantum key distribution using free space optical communications over 144 km[6] between the islands of Tenerife and La Palma.